lse.

"I snum! mebbe you're right," grunted Walky Dexter. "And I reckon
talkin' don't do much good after all. Now, look at Cross Moore. I been
at him a year an' more to fix that rail fence along the ditch by his
house. 'Tain't done no good. But, by jinks! somebody else got at him,"
added Walky, slyly, "an' I see this mornin' Cross was gittin' the rails
and new posts there. He was right on the job."

Janice's cheeks grew rosy. "Why!" she cried, "I never said a word to him
about it."

"No; but somehow he got the idee from you. He told me so," and Walky
chuckled.

"I think Mr. Moore likes to joke--the same as you do, Mr. Dexter," said
Janice, quietly.

"Ahem! You sartainly have got some of us goin'," said the driver,
whimsically. "Look at Jase Day! I never _did_ think nothin' less'n
Gabriel's trump would start Jase. But yest'day I'm jiggered if I didn't
see him mendin' his pasture fence. And the old Day house looks like
another place--that's right. How d'you do it?"

"I--I don't just know what you mean," stammered Janice, feeling very
uncomfortable.

He looked at her with his eyes screwed up again. "D'you know what they
said about yer uncle las' year? He come down to Jefferson's store with
a basket of pertaters. All the big ones was on top and the little ones
at the bottom. Huh! _He_ ain't the only one that 'deacons' a basket of
pertaters," and Walky chuckled.

"But the boys said 'twas easy to see how come Jase's pertaters that-a
way. 'Twas 'cause it took him so 'tarnal long to dig a basket, that the
pertaters grew ahead of him in the row--that's right! When he begun they
was little, but by the time he got a basket full they'd growed a lot,"
and the gossip guffawed his delight at the story.

"But he's sure gettin' 'round some spryer this year. An' I snum! there's
Marty, too. He's workin' in his mother's garden reg'lar. I seen him.
'Fore you came, Miss Janice, if Marty was diggin' in the garden an'
found a worm, he thought he was goin' fishin' and got him a bait can and
a pole, an' set right off for the lake--that's right!" and Walky shook
all over, and grew so red in the face over his joke that Janice was
really afraid he was becoming apoplectic.

But something in the middle of the road, as they made another corner,
stopped all this fun.

"Hullo!" exclaimed Walky. "That young feller on the gasoline bike has
had an accident. Don't it look that way to you?"

CHAPTER XIII

NELSON HALEY

The team dr